mike kelly

If he was pissed then he should not have been driving. Yet another reason for not walking out in front of his vehicle.

The fact that the guy verbally abused me as he drove past proves that I was right. He clearly did not stop out of politeness. 

  well, we don´t all live in Schwabing.

What prompted me to start this thread:   Last week I was walking home at about 10 pm on a dark quite street. I crossed the street using a traffic island (NOT a zebra crossing) and as I was on the island I saw an oncoming car. This was the only car on a deserted street so I waited for it to pass by before crossing as I always do. Instead of driving past me as normaly happens the car stopped. So did I. Then the guy started waving his hand. I stood my ground as I was afraid that this guy might be a mugger who would start the car and try to run me over as I was crossing.The street was deserted and I couldn´t understand why he did not drive on. Eventually he did, hurling abuse at me as he passed. Unfortunately I didn´t get his reg as it was dark although I doubt the police would do anything in such a case.

Are drivers legally allowed to make hand signals to pedestrians? For example, at traffic islands ("Verkehrsinseln") cars have the right of way and are not required to stop for pedestrians waiting on the traffic island. It can happen though that a car does stop and the driver waves his / her hand to indicate to the pedestrian that he / she should go ahead and cross the road.   When I did my driving test in Ireland over 20 years ago I was explicitly told by the driving instructor never to give any hand signals such as waving to pedestrians as in the case of an accident as I could be considered (at least partly) liable.

  When is the last time you were in an East German supermarket?

What gets me is how rude some supermarket cashiers are. Thankfully self checkouts are on the way to solving this problem.